‘Love Object’ has been gaining a lot of attention and heaps of praise and rightly so, as it is the best film I have seen in a long time.
Kenneth is an awkward tech writer, who lives for his work. He is sex starved and frustrated, resorting to listening to his landlord’s noisy sex sessions, and frequenting porn shops to get off.
When Kenneth’s colleagues inform him of a new life-like anatomically correct silicone sex doll, he orders one and quickly becomes infatuated with it.
As his confidence grows however, he soon starts taking a fancy to the new girl at work, Lisa. This of course infuriates sex doll Nikki.
What follows is a darkly comic descent into madness as Kenneth may or may not be going crazy.
Love Object stands up to it’s reputation and delivers a mix of thrills, chills, laughs and romance.
Acting almost like a male companion piece to Lucky McKee’s ‘May’, the film was a welcome breath of fresh air in a horror-less summer. (seriously what do we have to look forward to, Godsend?)
The film works largely due to it’s very talented and capable cast. Desmond Harrington cements his reputation as the new King of horror with yet another fine turn, backed up by the excellent Rip Torn as his pushy boss, and Udo Keir as his suspicious landlord.
By far the biggest surprise however was the performance by Melissa Sagemiller, who genuinely surprised me with her first serious role (by that I mean not in a teen comedy, and without the chance of being once again upstaged by the sexy Eliza Dushku).
The film is expertly crafted by writer / director Robert Parigi, ensuring that every minute detail serves it’s purpose.
Aesthetically the film is pale to begin with but adds dashes of colour as they are added to Kenneth’s personal life. The doll is well handled too, making sure that the audience is never entirely sure if Kenneth is having a breakdown or if Nikki really is stalking him.
Even when the film shifts into full blown bloody terror mode, it befits the story perfectly guaranteeing that you will enjoy this from start to finish. (If you don’t then you need your head looked at).
OVERALL SUMMARY
Expertly crafted and quite obviously a labour of love, it infuriates me that accomplished pieces of work like this continue to go straight to video, when the multiplexes are filled with teen trash and CGI fests.
